“…..a lithe fawn coloured body sprang into the air in a graceful arc.” writes B.P. Srivastava, Conservator of Forests in U.P. in the 1950s, while penning down his observation of a Caracal hunting a Partridge. He had later shot the animal for identification and further writes, “The face and body were cat-like but the tail was proportionately shorter…..The colour of the body was light fawn and the undersides white. The ears were much longer than in the … Read More
The Forgotten Wild Cats of the Eastern Ghats
The Northern parts of the Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh are isolated hill ranges with elevations of up to 1500 metres altitude. This landscape complex, with its associated habitats such as dry deciduous forests, riparian buffers, inland freshwater bodies, tropical mangroves, and open scrub, spans across four districts in North Coastal Andhra. Apart from the well-known big cat species like the Tiger and Leopard, these forests are also home to lesser known and often neglected small wild cat species. The … Read More
Rusty-spotted Cat, Maharashtra
The Rusty-spotted Cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus) is the smallest wild cat species that occurs only in India and Sri Lanka. Available information relies on a few sightings across its range and the species is thought to be rare. I discovered a breeding population of rusty spotted cats from a human-dominated agricultural landscape in W. Maharashtra. I propose that we should also focus on agricultural landscapes, which are likely to have high rodent densities, to study some of the smaller … Read More
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